In the session from Game Developers Conference 2011, well take a complete look at the terrain system in Frostbite 2 as it was applied in Battlefield 3. The session is partitioned into three parts. We begin with the scalability aspects and discuss how consistent use of hierarchies allowed us to combine high resolutions with high view distances. We then turn towards workflow aspects and describe how we achieved full in-game realtime editing. A fair amount of time is spent describing how issues were addressed. Finally, we look at the runtime side. We describe usage of CPU, GPU and memory resources and how it was kept to a minimum. We discuss how the GPU is offloaded by caching intermediate results in a procedural virtual texture and how prioritization was done to allow for work throttling without sacrificing quality. We also go into depth about the flexible streaming system that work with both FPS and driving games.

With the highest-quality video options, Battlefield 3 renders its Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion SSAO using the Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion HBAO algorithm. For performance reasons, the HBAO is rendered in half resolution using half-resolution input depths. The HBAO is then blurred in full resolution using a depth-aware blur. The main issue with such low-resolution SSAO rendering is that it produces objectionable flickering for thin objects such as alpha-tested foliage when the camera and/or the geometry are moving. After a brief recap of the original HBAO pipeline, this talk describes a novel temporal filtering algorithm that fixed the HBAO flickering problem in Battlefield 3 with a 1-2 performance hit in 1920x1200 on PC DX10 or DX11. The talk includes algorithm and implementation details on the temporal filtering part, as well as generic optimizations for SSAO blur pixel shaders. This is a joint work between Louis Bavoil NVIDIA and Johan Andersson DICE.

For Battlefield 3, DICE took on its most difficult challenge so far. To raise the bar for character quality in games we developed our own deformation rig, combined it with the powerful ANT animation system used in FIFA and extensive motion capture usage. To create a believable experience we built and managed enormous amount of assets and ways of keeping these organized. The rigging process was one of the most challenging aspects of production, with the smallest change requiring an update for almost every single asset. With a modular rigging system and a flexible animation pipeline the production team could deliver on time and quality.

In this master thesis report a new method for simulating waters surface waves is presented. The method is well adapted for real-time applications and has been developed with computer games in mind. By simulating the water surface at several different resolutions simultaneously using a construction similar to Laplacian Pyramids dispersion is handled approximately resulting in a complex behavior. The simulation is also extended with a dynamic level of detail method and phenomenological models for boundaries and high frequency waves. This method is prototyped inside the Frostbite engine developed at DICE and runs at 3 ms per time step on a single core of a Intel Xeon processor with high quality results.

The idea of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of the new video game devices PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect, further on the goal was to design and verify an interaction technique for each device, suitable for playing First-Person Shooter FPS games. During early prototyping it showed that it was not possible to turn the Kinect into an effective FPS game controller; because of this the focus of the thesis was shifted to the PlayStation Move exclusively. An interaction technique taking into account how FPS games traditionally have been played was designed. This technique differs from what is here referred to as the point-andshoot technique which is often used in conjunction with motion controllers. Performing tests on the implementation of the PlayStation Move on a total of fourteen persons showed that the suggested interaction technique seemed to have high performance and acceptance among the participants of the test. However more testing would be necessary to support the result.